Atlantis

For other uses, see Atlantis (disambiguation).

Atlantis (ancient Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, "Island of Atlas") is the name of an island first mentioned and described by the classical Greek philosopher Plato. According to him this island, lying "beyond the pillars of Hercules", was a naval power, having conquered many parts of western Europe and Africa. Soon after a failed invasion of Athens, Atlantis sank in the waves "in a single day and night of misfortune" after a natural catastrophe happened 9,000 years before Plato's time.

As a story embedded in Plato's dialogs, Atlantis is mostly seen as a myth created by Plato to back up a previously invented theory with "real" facts. Some scholars express the opinion that Plato intended to tell real history. Although the function of the Atlantis myth seems to be clear to most scholars, they dispute whether and how much Plato's account was inspired by older traditions. Some scholars argue Plato drew upon memories of past events such as the Thera eruption or the Trojan War, while others insist that he took inspiration of contemporary events like the destruction of Helike in 373 BC or the failed Athenian invasion on Sicily in 415-413 BC.

The possible existence of Atlantis was actively discussed throughout the classical antiquity, but it was usually rejected and occasionally parodied. While basically unknown during the Middle Ages, the Atlantis myth was rediscovered by Humanists at the very beginning of modern times. Plato's description inspired the utopian works of several Renaissance writers, like Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis". More than ever, Atlantis inspires today's literature, from science fiction to comic books.

File:Athanasius Kircher's.gif

Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. From Mundus Subterraneus 1669. The map is oriented with south at the top.

Plato's account

Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages.

— Critias to Socrates, according to Plato, Timaeus 20d. Translated by B Jowett.

Plato's accounts of Atlantis are in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, usually dated to the 360s BC. These works contain the earliest known references to Atlantis. The dialog Critias was never completed by Plato for some reason, however some scholars argue that he originally planned an additional third dialog titled Hermocrates. John V. Luce assumes that Plato — after describing the origin of the world and mankind in Timaeus as well as the pretended existence of a perfect society in ancient Athens and its successful defense against the attacking Atlantis in Critias — would have made the strategy of the Hellenic world in their ongoing fight against the barbarians a subject of discussion in that possible third dialog.

The four persons appearing in those two dialogs are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaios, although only Critias is talking about Atlantis. While most likely all of these people actually lived, the dialogs as written down are surely put into their mouths by Plato. Plato uses dialogues to discuss contrary opinions right in front of the reader.

The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses on the perfect society (as described in Plato's Republic) and wonders if he and his guests could come up with a story which puts this society into action. Critias mentions an allegedly historical tale that he would make the perfect example, and follows up by describing Atlantis in the Critias. In his account, ancient Athens represents the "perfect society," and Atlantis, its opponent, represents the opposite of the "perfect" traits described in the Republic. Critias claims that his account of ancient Athens and Atlantis stems from a visit to Egypt by the Athenian lawgiver Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Athens and Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into Greek. According to Plutarch the priest was named Sonchis, but because of the temporal distance between him and the alleged event, this identification is unknowable.

According to Critias, the Hellenic gods of old divided the land so that each god might own a lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Libya and Asia Minor combined, but has since been sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Egyptians described Atlantis as an island approximately 700 kilometres (435 mi) across, comprising mostly mountains in the northern portions and along the shore, and encompassing a great plain of an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 600 km; 375 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 400 km; 250 mi]."

Fifty stadia inland from the middle of the southern coast was a "mountain not very high on any side." Here lived a native woman with whom Poseidon fell in love and who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these, Atlas, was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (now the Atlantic Ocean), and was given the mountain of his birth and the surrounding area as his fiefdom. Atlas's twin Gadeirus or Eumelus in Greek, was given the easternmost portion of the island. The other four pairs of twins — Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes — "were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea."

Poseidon carved the inland mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each of the city's rings. The walls were constructed of red, white and black rock quarried from the moats, and were covered with brass, tin and orichalcum, respectively.

Ancient Athens as described by Plato is practically identical to his "perfect society" (as described in the Republic). Unlike the real Athens of Plato's lifetime it was not a sea-faring nation, it did not even have ports at all. The constitution of the Athenian state was given the people by goddess Athena, who according to Plato can be identified with Egyptian goddess Neith, who gave a very similar constitution to ancient Egypt. These Athens, that could not be defeated by a much bigger empire, were later devastated by the same flood that destroyed Atlantis.

According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime, a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the Mediterranean as far east as Egypt and the continent into Tyrrhenia, and subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against the Atlantean empire and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands. "But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea." Plato claimed it was somewhere outside the Pillars of Hercules, now known as the Strait of Gibraltar.

Receptions

Ancient

Detail of The School of Athens by Raphael, 1509, showing Plato and Aristotle.

Its inventor caused it to disappear, just as did the Poet the wall of the Achaeans.

— Alleged quote of Aristotle, according to Strabo, Geography 2,3,6. Translated by HL Jones.

Other than Plato's Timaeus and Critias there is no primary ancient account on Atlantis, which means every other account on Atlantis relates on Plato in one way or another. There has not been found any proof for a non-Platonic tradition of Atlantis to this day. However, there is a lost work of the Greek logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos named Atlantis (or Atlantias), which is about the daughters of the titan Atlas (not the Atlas mentioned by Plato). Anyway, it is unlikely that this work was an inspiration to Plato, since he named Atlantis after the Atlantic Ocean (ancient Greek: Ἀτλαντὶς θάλασσα, "Sea of Atlas"), which is verified to be named such since Herodotus.

Many ancient philosophers viewed Atlantis as fiction. The most popular might be Aristotle, who is allegedly quoted by Strabo with the above mentioned commentary on Atlantis.

However, in antiquity, there were a also philosophers, geographers, and historians who believed that Atlantis was real. For instance, the philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, tried to find proof of Atlantis' existence. His work, a comment on Plato's Timaeus, is lost, but another ancient historian, Proclus, reports that Crantor traveled to Egypt and actually found columns with the history of Atlantis written in hieroglyphic characters. Anyway, Plato did not write that Solon saw the Atlantis story on a column but on a source that can be "taken to hand". This basically makes Proclus' proof implausible.

Another passage from Proclus' 5th century AD commentary on the Timaeus gives a description of the geography of Atlantis: "That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone, and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Pluto, another to Ammon, and another one between them to Poseidon, the extent of which was a thousand stadia; and the inhabitants of it—they add—preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in his Aethiopica". However, Heinz-Günther Nesselrath argues that this Marcellus — who is otherwise unknown — is probably not a historian but a novelist.

Other ancient historians and philosophers believing in the existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius (cf. Strabo 2,3,6).

Plato's account of Atlantis may have also inspired parodic imitation: writing only a few decades after the Timaeus and Critias, the historian Theopompus of Chios wrote of a land beyond the ocean known as Meropis. This description was included in Book 8 of his voluminous Philippica, which contains a dialogue between King Midas and Silenus, a companion of Dionysus. Silenus describes the Meropids, a race of men who grow to twice normal size, and inhabit two cities on the island of Meropis: Eusebes (Εὐσεβής, "Pious-town") and Machimos (Μάχιμος, "Fighting-town"). He also reports that an army of ten million soldiers crossed the ocean to conquer Hyperborea, but abandoned this proposal when they realized that the Hyperboreans were the luckiest people on earth. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath has argued that these and other details of Silenus' story are meant as imitation and exaggeration of the Atlantis story, for the purpose of exposing Plato's ideas to ridicule.

Somewhat similar is the story of Panchaea, written by philosopher Euhemerus. It mentions a perfect society on an island in the Indian Ocean. Zoticus, a Neoplatonist philosopher of the 3rd century AD, wrote an epic poem based on Plato's account of Atlantis.

The 4th century AD historian Ammianus Marcellinus, relying on a lost work by Timagenes, a historian writing in the 1st century BC, writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Ammianus' testimony has been understood by some as a claim that when Atlantis sunk into the sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus in fact says that “the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine" (Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north and east, not from the Atlantic Ocean.

Modern

A map showing a supposed location of Atlantis. From Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, 1882.

Francis Bacon's 1627 novel The New Atlantis describes a utopian society, called Bensalem, located off the western coast of America. A character in the novel gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's, and places Atlantis in America. It is not clear whether Bacon means North or South America.

In middle and late 19^th century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon proposed that Atlantis was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture.

Ignatius Donnelly, American congressman, and writer on Atlantis.

The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. Donnelly took Plato's account of Atlantis seriously and attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from its high neolithic culture.

American psychic Edgar Cayce, 1910

During the late 19th century, ideas about the mythical nature of Atlantis were combined with other lost continent myths such as Mu and Lemuria by popular figures in the occult and the growing new age phenomenon. Helena Blavatsky, the "Grandmother of the New Age movement," writes in The Secret Doctrine that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato who describes them mainly as a military threat), and are the fourth "Root Race", succeeded by the "Aryan race". Rudolf Steiner wrote of the cultural evolution of Mu or Atlantis. Famed psychic Edgar Cayce first mentioned Atlantis in a life reading given in 1923, and later gave its geographical location as the Caribbean, and proposed that Atlantis was an ancient, now-submerged, highly-evolved civilization which had ships and aircraft powered by a mysterious form of energy crystal. He also predicted that parts of Atlantis would rise in 1968 or 1969. The Bimini Road, a submarine geological formation just off North Bimini Island, discovered in 1968, has been claimed by some to be evidence of the lost civilization (among many other things) and is still being explored today.

Before the time of Eratosthenes about 250 BC, ancient Greek writers located the Pillars of Hercules on the Strait of Sicily. This changed with Alexander the Great’s eastward expansion and the Pillars were moved by Eratosthenes to Gibraltar. This evidence has been cited in some Atlantis theories, notably in Sergio Frau's work.

Nationalist and Socialist ideas of Atlantis

Plato's Atlantis has been considered by some socialists as an early socialist utopia. British nationalists identified the British isles with Atlantis.

The concept of Atlantis also entered National Socialist (Nazi) theory through Theosophy and Anthroposophy. In 1938, Heinrich Himmler organized a search in Tibet to find a remnant of the white Atlanteans. According to Julius Evola (Revolt Against the Modern World, 1934), the Atlanteans were Hyperboreans -- Nordic supermen who originated on the North pole (see Thule). Similarly, Alfred Rosenberg (The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) spoke of a "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race.

Aleister Crowley has also written an esoteric history of Atlantis, although this may be intended more as metaphor than as fact.

Recent times

Atlantis, I take it, is a creation of Plato's own imagination.

— JA Stewart, The Myths of Plato, p. 466.

As continental drift became better understood and accepted during the 1950s, most "Lost Continent" theories of Atlantis were shown to be impossible. In response, some recent theories propose that elements of Plato's story were derived from earlier myths.

More plausibly, the highly respected Plato scholar Dr Julia Annas (Regents Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona) has had this to say on the matter:

"The continuing industry of discovering Atlantis illustrates the dangers of reading Plato. For he is clearly using what has become a standard device of fiction - stressing the historicity of an event (and the discovery of hitherto unknown authorities) as an indication that what follows is fiction. The idea is that we should use the story to examine our ideas of government and power. We have missed the point if instead of thinking about these issues we go off exploring the sea bed. The continuing misunderstanding of Plato as historian here enables us to see why his distrust of imaginative writing is sometimes justified."

Location hypotheses

Main article: Location hypotheses of Atlantis

Satellite image of the islands of Santorini. This location is often purported to have been the location of Atlantis.

To one degree or another, all these scenarios involve such a deal of reinterpretation (with violence) of Plato's actual words that the end result is ridiculous.

— P Jordan, The Atlantis Syndrom, p. 40.

Inside the Mediterranean

Since Donnelly's day, there have been dozens—perhaps hundreds—of locations proposed for Atlantis. Some are scholarly or archaeological works whilst others have been made by psychic or other pseudoscientific means. Many of the proposed sites share some of the characteristics of the Atlantis story (water, catastrophic end, relevant time period), but none have been proven conclusively to be the historical Atlantis. Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea, either islands such as Sardinia, Crete and Santorini, Cyprus, Malta, and Ponza or as land based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos or Tantalus (in the province of Manisa), Turkey, and the new theory of Israel-Sinai or Canaan as possible locations. The massive Thera eruption, dated either to the 17th or the 15th century BC, caused a massive tsunami that experts hypothesize devastated the Minoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe which inspired the story.

Outside the Mediterranean

Locations as wide-ranging as Antarctica, Indonesia and the Caribbean have been proposed as the true site of Atlantis. The submerged island of Spartel near the Strait of Gibraltar would coincide with some elements of Plato's account, matching both the location and the date of submersion given in the Critias. In the area of the Black Sea at least three locations have been proposed: Bosporus, Sinop and Ancomah (a legendary place near Trabzon). The nearby Sea of Azov was proposed as another site in 2003. Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were also identified as possible locations, notably the Azores (Mid-Atlantic islands which are a territory of Portugal), and several Caribbean islands. In Northern Europe, Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in "Atland", 1672-1702), Ireland, and the North Sea have been proposed (Swedish geographer Ulf Erlingsson combines the North Sea and Ireland in a comprehensive hypothesis). Areas in the Pacific and Indian Ocean have also been proposed including Indonesia, Malaysia or both (i.e. Sundaland) and stories of a lost continent off India named "Kumari Kandam" have drawn parallels to Atlantis. Even Cuba has been suggested. The Canary Islands have also been identified as a possible location, west of the Straits of Gibraltar but in close proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. Some believe that Atlantis stretched from the tip of Spain to Central America.

Atlantis in fiction

Main article: Atlantis in fiction

The legend of Atlantis is frequently featured in many books, movies, television series, games, and other creative works. A current example is Stargate Atlantis, in which Atlantis is depicted as a high-tech mobile city currently located in the Pegasus Galaxy. It also appears in The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time as the location of one of the three pieces of the Legacy.

See also

• Location hypotheses of Atlantis
• Ancient mysteries
• Lemuria
• Mu (lost continent)
• Thule
• Hyperborea
• continent
• Sea level rise
• Americas
• Pangaea
• Númenor
• Atlantis: the lost continent revealed
• Space Shuttle Atlantis

References

Ancient sources

• Plato, Timaeus, translated by Benjamin Jowett; alternative version with commentary.
• Plato, Critias, translated by Benjamin Jowett; alternative version with commentary.

Modern sources

• Berlitz, C (1969). The Mystery of Atlantis: The Eighth Continent?, London: Souvenir Press.
• Bichler, R (1986). 'Athen besiegt Atlantis. Eine Studie über den Ursprung der Staatsutopie', Canopus, vol. 20, no. 51, pp. 71-88.
• De Camp, LS (1954). Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature, New York: Gnome Press.
• Donnelly, I (1882). Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, New York: Harper & Bros. Retrieved November 6, 2001, from Project Gutenberg.
• Ellis, R (1998). Imaging Atlantis, New York: Knopf. ISBN 0679446028
• Erlingsson, U (2004). Atlantis from a Geographer's Perspective: Mapping the Fairy Land, Miami: Lindorm. ISBN 0975594605
• Flem-Ath, R & Wilson, C (2000). The Atlantis Blueprint, London: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316853135
• Frau, S (2002). Le Colonne d'Ercole: Un'inchiesta, Rome: Nur neon. ISBN 8890074000
• Gill, C (1976). 'The origin of the Atlantis myth', Trivium, vol. 11, pp. 8-9.
• Görgemanns, H (2000). 'Wahrheit und Fiktion in Platons Atlantis-Erzählung', Hermes, vol. 128, pp. 405-420.
• Griffiths, JP (1985). 'Atlantis and Egypt', Historia, vol. 34, pp. 35f.
• Heidel, WA (1933). 'A suggestion concerning Platon's Atlantis', Daedalus, vol. 68, pp. 189-228.
• Jordan, P (1994). The Atlantis Syndrom, Stroud: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0750935189
• Martin, TH [1841] (1981). 'Dissertation sur l'Atlantide', in TH Martin, Études sur le Timée de Platon, Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, pp. 257-332.
• Morgan, KA (1998). 'Designer history: Plato's Atlantis story and fourth-century ideology', Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 118, pp. 101-118.
• Nesselrath, HG (1998). 'Theopomps Meropis und Platon: Nachahmung und Parodie', Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 1, pp. 1-8.
• Nesselrath, HG (2001a). 'Atlantes und Atlantioi: Von Platon zu Dionysios Skytobrachion', Philologus, vol. 145, pp. 34-38.
• Nesselrath, HG (2001b). 'Atlantis auf ägyptischen Stelen? Der Philosoph Krantor als Epigraphiker', Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 135, pp. 33-35.
• Nesselrath, HG (2002). Platon und die Erfindung von Atlantis, München/Leipzig: KG Saur Verlag. ISBN 3598775601
• Nesselrath, HG (2005). 'Where the Lord of the Sea Grants Passge to Sailors through the Deep-blue Mere no More: The Greeks and the Western Seas', Greece & Rome, vol. 52, pp. 153-171.
• Phillips, ED (1968). 'Historical Elements in the Myth of Atlantis', Euphrosyne, vol. 2, pp. 3-38.
• Ramage, ES (1978). Atlantis: Fact or Fiction?, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253104823
• Spence, L [1926] (2003). The History of Atlantis, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. ISBN 0486427102
• Szlezák, TA (1993). 'Atlantis und Troia, Platon und Homer: Bemerkungen zum Wahrheitsanspruch des Atlantis-Mythos', Studia Troica, vol. 3, pp. 233-237.
• Vidal-Naquet, P (1986). 'Athens and Atlantis: Structure and Meaning of a Platonic Myth', in P Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 263-284. ISBN 0801832519
• Wilson, C (1997). From Atlantis to the Sphinx, London: Virgin Books. ISBN 0880641762
• Zangger, E (1993). The Flood from Heaven: Deciphering the Atlantis legend, New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0688113508

External links

• Atlantis: the Myth from Encyclopedia Mythica
• Atlantis Myth or Reality
• A lawyer's letter indicating publisher interest in William James Sidis's Lost Atlantis Manuscript
• Sci-Fi-Series - Stargate: Atlantis
• The Destruction of Atlantis - Google Video
• Atlantis Discussed as a Mystic Place
• Collected and original essays on the topic of Atlantis by Genry Joil